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Tips: Resilience
"BLAK!" my shoulder hit the mat again and whipped my head to the mat following it. My head was now disoriented and a piercing headache took it's residence. The competitor grabbed one of my arms with both hands and then I heard it: "NOW".
I ripped his hands off of my arm, stepped up with a fury, and swung around backing up to take a look at him. He was just as fatigued as I was due to my resilience. "I've been getting thrown around for the last two rounds and I've only been defending. I now know his only three tactics. I don't know if I'll be able to offend but I wont let those maneuvers pin me after knowing how they work", I thought to my self. I then engaged my enemy with vigor and delivered defense with the same tenacity he would strike in offense.
I spent the rest of the match countering his moves second after second. After a while I began to laugh, not only at myself but the opponent I was wrestling. I remember laughing as he smashed my face into the mat and attempted to exert another generic pinning move on me. My face was definitely in a mess but I countered that move with the rest of my body and his efforts were futile. Needless to say, I lost that match and at the end of the last round the points read an embarrassing 14-6. But hey, I didn't get pinned and my opponent sure was pissed.
Now in my older years this event has held a significant meaning in my life as well as a lesson well learned. Resilience doesn't always win the match but you'll never find yourself pinned in the first minute and a half of fighting. The process is long, but a process worth enduring for the sake of personal development and of course, pride.
The most successful people in this world are the resilient. Consider Steve Jobs who picked up the failing Pixar company after being practically kicked out of Apple Incorporated. Jobs continued to invest in this company for 4 years and almost gave up on it when just a year later Toy Story, a movie, grossed 361million U.S. dollars world wide. After 11 years of being away from Apple Inc. he had already created a child's movie giant and another company called NeXT. He then came back to Apple Inc. when another company he founded, called NeXT, was defunct. Apple now makes over 156 billion dollars in revenue after being started in a Job's garage 37 years ago.
Consider Bill Gates with Microsoft where in the first year they had a revenue of 16,000 (he would have made more working in a cubicle for an already established company) in the first year. One more year later: 1 million. 38 years later they now have a revenue over 73 billion. Imagine the alternate outcomes if these masterminds had given up in their passion and goals.
If you have been fighting a mental illness for only a year or 5 years while trying to achieve your supposed "outlandish" dreams and goals and making only satisfactory progress-- consider yourself on the way to stardom. Both of these companies previously mentioned took about 3-5 years to amount to anything significant to any other ordinary business.
Everything in life is a huge wrestling match. You'll spend more time getting teared up and thrashed on the way to a successful and victorious match than you ever will spend on actually being in a successful and victorious match. But this is all good; it means you are still fighting for something better that what you have or are now. It means you're doing more than most people would even think of doing in their life time.
It took me two months of looking like a girl on the mat to finally have a victorious match. Actually, you know what? No, two months to have a couple victorious matches in the same day along with a second place medal. It took 4 years to finally be able to get a B in a math class in high school. It took me 4 years to actually be able to bench 185 pounds, 4 years before I could barely lift the bar. It took me 19 years to actually develop some sort of inner pride and self inflicted confidence in myself. 19 years to admit to myself I might actually be smart, even if it's just a little. It took be 19 years to understand and control most of my fears. It took me 19 years to have confidence in my writing. It took me 19 years to actually play the piano and stay there. 19 years to be everything I want to be write now, but not everything I want to be tomorrow or ever again and all of this was given to me in the last 5 months of my life.
Tomorrow I'm going to wake up to where I am not enrolled in school. I'm going to wake up realizing I have 1 point to raise my GPA to be considered admittance into any 4 year college. I'm going to wake up to a person who needs to raise at least 2 points to be admitted to the program of my dreams. I'm going to wake up to a person who still has at least 2 years of community college to do that. I'm going to wake up to a blog that probably only has 20 views a day, bills that have to be paid, tuition to be raised, work shoes to purchase, a flabby stomach, people who aren't exactly impressed with who I am and what I've done and decided to do, and this little voice that says "just give up" 24/7 and seeks to give me more gifts to wake up to.
Today I have all these things. I have them because I let my depression and anxiety pin me. But now I know how the dynamic duo works. I know their tricks, schemes and maneuvers. And what am I doing now? I'm once again arrogantly laughing against my opponent because he can be offensive but he can not pin me.
One day I will have all things of the opposite manner and more. One day I will wake up and be happy that I decided to wake up again. One day, one person will look at what I did with my life and say "I'm going to do that too." And ONE day I will charge the streets and with real meaning and understanding sing the less than satisfying, repetitive but reasonable lyrics by Drake " I just think its funny how it goes. Now I'm on the road, half a million for a show. And now we started from the bottom now we're here. Started from the bottom now my whole team [freaking] here."
But that one day isn't here, so now I'll do what Jobs and Gates did and do what I need to get there TODAY.
(Facts and statistics brought to you by Wikipedia.)
